I've always been somewhat scared by tornadoes. Garden-variety thunderstorms, I love, but when it gets scary, I get nervous. My husband is the guy who poo-poos storms and I must drag him to the basement, even when the sirens are blaring. His nonchalance had started to rub off on me, though. After eleventy thousand tornado warnings that ended up blowing over us, I'd started to be a bit blase about possible tornadoes as well.
Then, less than a month ago, Joplin, Missouri got hit by that awful tornado. Joplin isn't terribly far from us, and seeing all the destruction hitting so close to home scared the hell out of me. I was back to full tornado phobia status.
Just a couple of days later, the meteorologist greeted me in the morning with a frightening forecast. They predicted that the storm coming that day was a major one, and peppered their weather report with words like "supercell" and "violent."
I also have self-diagnosed pressure sensitivity. When rain is coming, my joints hurt, my body feels tight and heavy, and my stomach sometimes gets upset. I had all of those symptoms that morning. I dropped the boys off at school with a sense of dread. I asked G's teachers about their tornado procedures, and they explained that they take the babies into a central hallway bathroom. They went on to say that the kids in L's room go into the bathroom in the classroom. They could tell I wasn't thrilled with this procedure, and told me that other parents weren't either. Apparently, several parents had told the teachers they'd be there early to pick up their babies.
I left the boys' school shaky and nervous, wanting desperately to run back in and take them both home, setting up camp in the basement.
I didn't, though. I worked all day, leaving the radar up on my computer and checking it compulsively, as did most of my coworkers. Around 3 pm, I walked up to the office to use the bathroom. My principal looked panic-stricken. She asked me to find a dry-erase marker and write on the board outside the office, "CAR RIDERS." I looked past her to see hundreds of parents, in a line that snaked out of the office, through the front doors and down the sidewalk. The sky was dark and rain was coming down in sheets.
I did what she asked me, then ran back down to my classroom. The radar showed that the storm was minutes away, and I heard people talking about the tornado that had already hit a few exits away. I grabbed my belongings and found my assistant principal. My voice breaking, I asked how he felt about teachers leaving to get their children. He said that although our school needed as many bodies as possible, he'd understand if I felt like I needed to get them.
I hemmed and hawed for about a minute, and then the tornado sirens rang out loudly. I literally ran out of the building and drove to the boys' school. The drive that usually takes me about four minutes took me about a minute and a half. I pulled into the full parking lot, jumped out of the car, and ran to the door, shaking. I was led to the front bathroom, where the teachers were sitting with babies on their laps, surrounded by pillows. For some reason, that sight upset me more than I had imagined. I took G and ran to L's room. The teachers were in the bathroom, reading a story to the preschoolers, Any empty space on the floor was covered with couch cushions. L was leaning against a toilet, a pillow on his lap.
I drove home a bit frantically, checking the sky in my rear-view mirror and listening to every radio personality talking about the storms. At that point, there was a tornado warning in every single county in my state. The sky was slate-colored, rain was coming down, and the wind was whipping anything it could.
I brought the boys inside and turned on the television. Before I could get much information, the signal faded. I took that as a sign and grabbed L, G, some snacks, and G's carseat and hauled everyone and everything into the basement. I started text messaging B, who said that his company had moved the thousands of employees there into the basement. I watched live-streaming weather on my laptop, trying to keep a calm facade for my boys.
An hour and a half later, the weather had seemingly calmed. The meteorologists indicated that it was a break between storms, and B called to tell me he was on his way home. By the time he got home, we were back upstairs, a bit shaken, but no worse for the wear.
